soul upon consception

at what point does the soul enter the fetus? is it when the egg first fertilized or is the soul carried in sperm or in the egg or what?

 

When the mother feels the souls prescence. For my partner, she felt the soul coming long before the moment of conception.

 

According to one purana... sorry i forgot the name of it, it has been said that the soul enters a grain of rice. Rice is then eaten by a man, a man and if the "soul" is lucky , then that man will mate and implant him- if lucky into a womb.

 

So what happens to those who don't eat rice?

 

Its rice- food... which the purana says gets converted to semen...

 

Well I guess thats probably true in the sense that our bodies and all the cells they contain rely on food.
But I'm not at all sure that the soul of the individual being actually can be said to enter through this route. In fact, I think it is very highly unlikely.
If it were so, then a man would have all these other souls inside him. And what would happen to them in the case of celibacy - or condom use, or even masturbation?
It would also seem to mean that between human incarnations the soul would have to incarnate as a plant, in order to have some remote chance to be eaten by a human male of breeding age in order to first be converted into sperm cells, and then be the lucky one in how ever many millions it is to make it to fuse with the egg.

 

I was only talking about souls that have the chance to be in a human body...There are many souls that enter a man's body, but only a few will have the chance to be born, the rest of them will then have to continue to take other forms of life. Life of a human being, as hard as it is- is very special and we are lucky to even make it this far, now we have to plan our trip to God... well atleast thats what they say.

 

I fear 'they' are wrong. All this sems very unlikely.

 

yat pinde tat brahmande.

Thank which is in a grain of rice is in the entire cosmos.

 

I'll explain my reasons for not believing this to be true.


First, it makes a complete foolery of the whole concept of re-incarnation. It would be an extremely clumsy mechanism if the soul had to go through this roundabout process of first entering into food etc.

Also, its reminiscent of a view of human reproduction which is pre-scientific. In the past, in both east and west, male sperm was thought of as 'seed' in a crude manner, just like plant seed. A woman's body was thought to be somewhat like the earth - a fertile field into which the seed was planted. There was no conception that a woman's body actually contains millions of eggs. So sperm was seen as the vehichle of life.
In this age, we know how conception takes place at the physical level. That it is the egg which develops into the baby. In this connection, and with some thoughts on some further significance of all this see

http://user.cyberlink.ch/~koenig/spermo.htm

I think its much more likely that the soul comes in from another dimension, either at the time of conception, or later.

 

I am not sure what the purana's name is, but I think it starts with "Bhairag..." or something like that... anyway, have you seen the movie Shankaracharya?, Shankara is asked to explain this part of that purana by his Guru and he explains it with explicit details of all the 9 months and how the baby develops.

He first starts with saying how death occurs and from death the soul goes to various planets according to its karma to live a certain type of lifestyle. If it goes to higher planets, then it continues on to brahmaloka (highest planet of this material universe). If it falls back due to its karma, it's ethereal body is eaten by demonic creatures that wait its arrival back to earth. When it (soul) arrives, it has no body, therefore it takes its shelter in water and water turns to rain and falls and this produces grain and you know what happens after that...

I agree with what you say about not believing all this, you don't have to and the puranas, upanishads and other texts of hinduism do not expect one to know any of this or agree with them. What one needs to do is strive for enlightenment and through sincere inquiry when one achieves liberation, then this other knowledge becomes a second nature to him and there is no need of believing or learning because he knows the truth.

 

I don't wholly accept or reject any set of scriptures. All contain truth in some degree. Many also contain much that is archaic and irrelevant to the modern world. This is true I think of the scriptures of all religions and cultures.

I agree absolutely that one should strive for enlightenment.

However, if we expect that enlightenment on a spiritual level will give us knowledge of the scientific order, I'm afraid disappointment lies in store.
Sages of different cultures in the past totally failed to agree over the cosmological systems and so on they developed. The basic structure of the body even was not underestood until the discovery of the cell in the 19th century. Nor the true cause of many diseases until bacteria were also discovered.
It would be quite wrong to imagine that the scientists who made these discoveries were seeking spiritual enlightenment. They were seeking to understand by empirical methods the structure of the universe and the human body, and how to alleviate suffering through curing and preventing disease.

The hope for the future seems to be a marriage of science and spirituality.

But whether we shall ever establish for certain how the soul gets into the body or not, it's not really that much of an essential question. But where religious or occult theories are concerned, I don't see any reason to accept any particular explanation over another on this issue.

 

I guess thats fine as long as you hold them as your truths.

 

Actually a lot of this knowledge was present in ancient india. For example Sushruta (who was a sanyasi) wrote the Sushruta Samahita, which is a textbook of anatomy and surgery. Sushruta was particularly well versed in plastic surgery and eye surgery.

The possibility of splitting the atom was known in ancient India. Anu is the word for atom and the physicists spoke of paramanu which is a smaller particle, which is indivisible. There is also a description of different types of paramanus.

Archimedes' theory was well known and applied long before he was even born.

The universal gravity constant was also known, well before Newton's great rgandfather was even concieved.

While the rest of the world thought that the world revolved around the earth, Brahmagupta had already measured the diameter of the earth. Aryabhatta was one of the first to insist tht the earth was round that the whole solar system revolved around the sun. It was he who first explained thatthe sun was the source of moonlight. He even taught that the stars were exactly like the sun, though some far greater in size. Aryabhattas mathematical works were translated into Latin in the 13th century by European scientists.

There is much to indicate that stem cell techniques was already well known in ancient India (something which the scientific community is only now learning to use). This is described in the mahabharata in great detail and corresponds closely with the various stages of harvesting and processing embroynic cells that are used today. Test tube babies were created more than 7500 years ago. All of the techniques are explained in detail in Mahabharata.

Also note that none of the equipment that modern science used for all this was available at the time. It is clearly an example of greater transcendent knowledge.

Having attained enlightenment, you become one with the entire universe, one with the creative force that expresses through it all. Therefore to understand the simple workings of the world is second nature to you, as Jedi put it. Such knowledge is childs play for a realized soul. However, it is not always passed on to the restof us, probably for our own good. The minute we found out we could split an atom we made a bomb and nuked whole cities. Somethings, perhaps, we are better off not knowing.

 

Well all I can say is if they knew all you claim, they didn't bother to apply it.

It's useless to argue that they didn't reveal it because it would be too much for humankind. In the case of the existence of bacteria for instance, millions must have died of easily curable diseases during the time the sages had their secret knowledge of all this, and before it was discovered by science.

But I'd be interested to see in black and white the details for example of knowledge of the existence and structure of biological cells prior to 19th century. Not some rough description which can be taken to refer to this because we know, thanks to science, about cells, but a detailed description of their structure etc.

But actually, I just think it is nonsense to claim that spiritual enlightenment would give knowledge of the details of the structure of the universe. If it were so then why, as I asked in my previous post, is there no agreement on these matters between sages of different times and cultures? Are you saying that only the sages of India were in fact enlightened?

 

You see you cannot say that the enlightened sages didn't have any scientific knowledge -definitely not by basing them only on our reasoning. Enlightened sages work differently than we do. they neither care for the body nor do they "not" care for it. They are free of all attachment and there is no reason for them to do anything. But ofcourse there is a good chance that they had some sort of scientific knowledge because they have shown their powers when they thought it was necessary. All of the miracles that Jesus performed are all examples of this. Many sages in India used to fly to other planets and back, one example would be parushurama. We see that there are descriptions of lankan airplanes in Valmiki Ramayan. Arjuna was given the knowledge of very powerful weapons by dronacharya. Bhisma learned everything he knows on heavenly planets. Hanuman , the silent meditator who is still meditating somewhere in himalayas has many great mystical powers. All these "powers" could be signs that these people have knowledge that is unknown to common man. Therefore, you cannot say they didn't have any scientific knowledge.

 

I don't doubt that the ancient sages had knowledge. But really, I don't think it qualifies as 'scientific knowledge' for a number of reasons.
Firstly, science means using scientific method. Hypotheseis, experiment etc. Also, it is based on empiricism, or knowledge derived from the senses. There is nothing mysterious about it, and it doesn't require any particular spiritual insight.

None of the examples you give would qualify because the knowledge was not arrived at through these means.

But there is no doubt another level or type of knowledge which scientists to-day, or some of them are gradually beginning to open up to. Spiritual realization. But there is nothing to indicate that this leads to knowledge of the scientific order.

Please understand that I am no champion of purely materialistic science - but it has undeniably led to many advances on the earth.. and to some problems. But overall I believe science has helped immensely.

Acceptance of the truth of science doesn't mean one has to turn one's back on the spiritual. The core teachings - what Huxley called 'the perennial philosophy' is untouched - it is mainly ephemeral , add-on stuff that is challenged by scientific thought. For the traditionalists of all religions this can lead to problems - the answer seems to me to be a greater mental flexibility which is ready to accept that not everything the ancient sages said is neccesarily correct, and that even the field of spirituality is open to progress.

 

"Knowledge" is only "knowledge" because we call it that. I can say that "cells are a part of scienfic knowledge and the study of cells and its components is part of cell biology" , but don't you see it has nothing to do with the real stuff- its the way we recognize them.

We use taxonomy to name things, we try to understand the universe, but just like the quantum physicists say - "you call it a particle it is a particle, you call it a wave its a wave!" we create reality and things we call real.

I am getting philosophical but I think we take this world which we see as reality, we see something and say what I am seeing is real, but it is not, there is something else that these enlightened individuals see. Through our own ignorance we create a distinction in knowledge- gained by reasoning and hypothesis and knowledge- gained by spiritual understanding. We create these distinctions, but they are not real. If there is an enlightened individual here(may happen to be there) , he might laugh at all this discussion. What you call scientific is scientific because you call it that, it does not go by that name.

there is more than one way of acquiring the knowledge that you call scientific and it does not have to do with "scientific reasoning".

that does not mean that who ever is using scientific reasoning is a spiritual drop out, that would be just ridiculous. You see, we create these distinctions, these words and these dualities, they really don't exist.

 

The problem with that is that it applies to all formulated knowledge. For instance, the doctrine of the gunas - so if it invalidates scientific knowledge, the same is true of the religious or occult knowledge of the sages.

My self, I don't think the world is unreal. Our perception of it may be, but the world itself is real enough.

As for methods of aquiring knowledge - scientific knowledge that is. I'm afraid it can only be classed as scientific it it has been aquired using scientific methods. We are not speaking here of jnana or gnosis. It is important to note that science goes way beyond reasoning to experimental verification. Otherwise, it isn't really science.

If the ancient sages had all this knowledge, it is hard to see why no technologies were developed by them. Surely much ignorance and suffering would then have been averted. Or - were they so convinced of the unreality of the world that they didn't care to intervene to alleviate what would only be seen as illusory suffering? And if so, isn't that very attitude yet another constructed illusion?

But I return to my original point - they didn't have scientific knowledge. They had spiritual realization, on the basis of which knowledge was formulated, but this comes under the head of religion or occultism, not science.

 

Why should the doctrine of gunas invalidate scientific knowledge? Please clear this up for me.

What I was saying is that : our perception of the world is at fault and their perception is not. One is enlightened when one sees the real Truth behind this world. They did things according to what they saw - the truth. We are arguing about this according to what we see - illusion.
For instance, They talk about two contradictory statements being not contradictory at all, but then we think how that is possible. An enlightened man may say "The supreme truth is larger than anything there is in this creation and is smaller than a grain of sand", now, how can you compare the two? in our minds this is nonsense, but in their minds its the truth. There is a big difference between our thinking and their thinking , we cannot judge them, we can only choose to follow or not to follow them.